XP-Pen is an artist specific company which only makes artist supplies such as tablets and light pads. They are the only Wacom alternative that I have come across which offers battery-free pens consistently for all their graphic tablets. Not all of their drawing monitors use battery-free pens though.

Personal Notes-XP-Pen is fairly established company alongside Huion, so they are quite trustworthy.-Their graphic tablets are all quite good and the “age” of each tablet is fairly easy to figure out as they are named in order from oldest to newest (ex. Star 03 is older than Star 04).-Their drawing monitors are all quite respectable, but I have heard that the monitor colours are not very well calibrated out-of-the-box.-XP-Pen is currently the only company which offers company-developed Linux drivers (still in beta testing). Wacom’s Linux drivers are community-developed, and are not actually official drivers, so XP-Pen is the first to do this.

Is XP-Pen worth looking at for drawing monitors?-Yes.

Here is how the packing looks like:

When opening it, I was so surprised about all the accessoirs inside! There's nothing missing: You get a glove, a tissue, a lot of cables and adapters!And there's already a matte screen protector on it.

I didn't find it hard to put all cables together. There is an instruction inside and if everything fails, there are many videos on Youtube.It's great that the tablet has a USB-C connection and if your PC gives it enough power, you don't need an external power source! This means it can be quite portable!Important: Please deinstall all old drivers (e.g. from Wacom) before installing the most current one from the XP-Pen website.And mind that the resolution of the display tablet is the same as your display from your PC. In my case, it's 1920 x 1080.After installing the driver and putting all together, you can adjust the tablet like the pressure sensitivity and the express keys.

Now my workplace looks like this:

Mind that there is NO stand included! But it doesn't matter because I simply bought a cheap one from Amazon. You can use any stand for a 17 inch laptop.

The pen is made of plastic, has a triangle shape and has a light weight. It can't roll away on the table. It has 2 adjustable keys like you know from Wacom and like the Wacom one, it's a passive pen. It means you don't have to charge it ever! Compared to Wacom's pens, it has no rubber grip and it's slimmer. Honestly, I loved the one from Wacom, but well... it's a matter of taste.